Thursday, 20 December, 2007
- 20 Dec 07, 05:50 PM
Afghanistan
We have the first television pictures from the battle for Musa Qala. I've been talking to the British ambassador in Kabul and we 'll also be asking International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander about the other battle in Afghanistan - the one for hearts and minds.
Omagh
In October Susan Watts reported on the growing doubts about one type of forensic evidence - it was called Low Copy Number DNA. Today the man accused of the Omagh bombing was found not guilty and in part that was because the judge did not find this evidence convincing. Should this type of evidence ever be used? We'll debate.
Sex
Should men who pay for sex be targeted for prosecution? Everyone agrees the idea of women being forced into prostitution is despicable, the sex trade from abroad into Britain is a key target for the police and for the government. But today Harriet Harman talked of targeting the men who pay for sex - would doing that be a good idea? And if it is a good idea, would it really have much of an impact on the trade in women forced into prostitution?
Plastic Bags
For me one of the most inspiring stories of the year is that of the 大象传媒 photographer who made a documentary about plastic pollution in Hawaii. If you saw Rebecca Hosking's documentary Hawaii: Message in the Waves you will have been appalled by the impact plastic has had on the lives of albatrosses, dolphins and other sea creatures. But when Rebecca returned home she talked to neighbours and friends in her small village in Devon ... and the result was a grassroots movement to do away with plastic bags as much as possible. Rebecca is one of our Newsnight End of the Year interviews.
Gavin
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I read somewhere that there is an equivalent to the Sargasso Sea, out in mid Atlantic, where all the floating plastic goes to "die" - or more correctly: refuse to die. Can we have a report on it please - if it's true. And can we send Hilary Benn out to view? Not for any purpose; I just like his empty rhetoric and those manic eyebrows.
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BILE DUCTS AND SPLEENS
Surely it is, by now, all too apparent that when the arrogant British turn up with their truculent American chums, to lay waste and slaughter by skilful application of top quality 鈥渄efence weapons鈥, the upshot is not 鈥渉earts and minds鈥 but 鈥渂ile ducts and spleens鈥 (frequently widely spaced).
Harriet Harman, on behalf of the New Labour disaster machine, wants to make prostitution illegal. I suggest that when she has done that successfully, she might call a halt to the prostitution of human life in armed forces 鈥 that other 鈥渙ldest profession鈥.
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I have just returned to Yorkshire after 7 years in the Irish Republic. During my time there, the Govt. introduced a 15 cent hypothecated tax on plastic carrier bags. I, and almost everyone else bought one or more cheap shopping bags and started to use and re-use them. Plastic carrier bag usage drastically reduced, and the tax charged on those sold went directly towards re-cycling schemes. By comparison with here, they are SERIOUS over there! Almost every town of any size has a re-cycling centre where you can take items. I regularly took, and put into separate receptacles; bottles, alumi. cans. steeel tin-plated cans, plastic bottles [of many differnt types],cardboard, newspapers, magazines, batteries [even car batteries!] light bulbs;etc.. There was also a collection point for ALL un-wanted electrical appliances. Believe me IT DOES WORK! However, if the greedy b....S in the Treasury get hold of the receipts here, it will be bound to fail! Hypothecation is a long word, but is absolutely essential to fund this sort of scheme.
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re: response to Barrie Singleton - in the form of knowledge, wisdom and reality
why do i always feel i am being edited?
RULES FOR EDITING
1. When i receive a contract, pension and salary of not less than K1 per week
2.When i pay for the tuition of that process
Anything else constitutes an infringement of my intellectual properties
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Perhaps the way to win back 'hearts & minds' is to call a UK election?!
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Every time this stupid woman opens her mouth, a torrent of man-hating garbage comes out. If she wants to outlaw prostitution, she should tell the police and the courts to crack down hard on those who sell sex. Instead, all we hear about are 'poor victims', and the women are back on the streets within hours.
Not all prostitutes are forced into sex by 'evil men', some make a very nice living out of it of their own free will.
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Prosecuting men for paying for sex is a typical politician's reaction to the problem. Women do not go into prostitution because they want to but because they have to.
The reason for prostitution is poverty. Address that issue and the results of poverty will go away.
In addition, tackling poverty will have other benefits in the areas in which prostitutes live , bringing prosperity and raising living standards `
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I think it's very easy for politicians who presumably have wives and therefore some kind of a sex life to say that prostitution amounts merely to "men having what they want" by paying for it.
This may be the case with some men, but why should men go through the scorn and ridicule of being forever virgins. My first time was with a prostitute and I'm proud of that. At the time I was suffering from clinical depression and was nearly sectioned because I was bullied by women and some of the more macheo type men becuase I was so straight and gentlemanly and respectful of women, so nice that no one wanted me.
This was absolutely killing me and it's because I'm a nice guy but I'm different, people find me nice to talk to but hard to get close too. I was also far too shy to ask for sex in a normal situation. I needed to learn how to feel happy I came from a broken home and my father died, and it wasn't easy for me.
High class prostitutes provide a useful service for men like me and actually help us to build less seedy and make successful lives. I have done a lot of reading on gender studies and I think it's time that men engaged in the debate more fully, by criticising some of these quite frankly sexist comments by leading women which will only succeed for creating a glass ceiling of happiness for men like me that without the aid of prositutes would be impossible to break through.
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Some people instead, within the media just take a mistress much easier costs less
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In a year where so much of such vast importance and impact in the world of climate change has come to the fore, I have always found the issue of plastic bags in the great scheme of things intriguing. Depending on who is quoted, some 200 per person per annum. I wonder if those at Blue Peter could tell us how many Fairy Liquid bottles they represent in terms of oil-based manufacture and disposal consequences?
But this lady's passion is undoubted and her concern admirable. And her story more than impactful, with its successful uptake a sure indication of the public mood. No wonder the media has found it so attractive. I can't imagine what it must be like to spend one's career as a documentary film-maker flying around the world to enjoy and capture nature's beauty, and find it so casually spoiled by the impositions of modern society.
There are so few positives about these things they make an excellent, and obvious target. But then I started to ponder the alternatives. It's one thing to ban something, but then having banned it one must look at the alternatives. Which is what I decided to do. Mainly because I felt I was getting a lot on the ban, but not as much on the consequences.
It's an ongoing education, and indeed this programme has added to it, at least indirectly, as there was one small informational piece that has resulted, namely the experience of the Irish contributor above. This provides an interesting and worthy counterpoint to other experiences I had learned of that were less positive, at least when it comes to the overall enviROI of the exercises. What seems undoubted is that the scourge of 'witches knickers' has been dealt with, but I still wonder at what cost in other areas.
It also has served to highlight the critical need for coordinated approaches between government, local authorities and business in creating logistical systems that are both effective environmentally (cost is 'an' issue, but trade-offs may need to be factored in if our priority is emissions as opposed to profits or litter) and capable of being easily engaged with by the public/consumer. Popping in the village deli with one's bike basket daily is one thing. Tescos en route home of a Friday night for a weekly shop is another. And here I am less convinced of deliverables. Especially when confronted with solutions that have 'bio' in the description.
Yes, with all else we are confronting in matters climatic, I did notice Mr. Brown has thrown his full weight behind... banning plastic bags. So one looks forward to him, and the media, getting as interested, and in the necessary detail, to do justice to all the other topics of high relevance to our nation's carbon footprint. Maybe next a ban on pets, perhaps? Or imported wine? Or beer (how much water consumed to create a pint?). Or...
Instead of, and hence less media attractive as a ban, as a fellow small town-dweller I was thinking more of a campaign to encourage our local retailers to shut their doors during cold snaps to avoid the heat loss pouring out into the sky. I rather fancied 'Shut it and Save'. The only down side I can perceive is the potential consumer-reluctance posed by a closed door, but everything else seems a win-win all round, even to their utility costs. What do you reckon?
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Dear Kevin,
I am addicted to your programmes... You are not only talking about agenda but also making an agenda.
Thank you very much...
I wish you and all other people in News Night, a Marry Christmas and a Peacefull, Healthy and Prosperous New Year!
Aurora
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Sir, Women become prostitutes because of poverty also women went to backstreet abortionists because they were desparate and had nowhere to turn, then we had the abortion law but some people would like us to return to the fifties and preach to us...t'was ever thus. Seasons greetings all at Newsnight.
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the question is 'should women be allowed to profit from sexual activity in a capitalist free market political economy?'
if you take the line that there is no qualitative difference between sex and say a massage or haircut, or such an intimate task as cleaning toilets, then the answer is to legalise the profession and enable women to organise as in any other private sector trade/profession.
if you take the line that there is a qualitative difference, that something mystically spritually morally changes when moving from massage to sexual activity, then you are probably driven by a religious creed
our problem is that morality in nu-britain is legally plural or multicultural, many political, medical and legal professionals now in situ hold distinctly religious ethics that are gradually being allowed to over-ride the previous secular codes of practice.
i vote we re-secularise big time before the relijniks (men by any chance?) return our fair society back to the dark ages
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Newsnight 20th December
Did I hear Douglas Alexander, whilst talking to Gavin Essler, utter the phrase
(he was)"...only focused on the one focus..."?
If so can we be told exactly what this gibberish means
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Proposing to make the buying of sex illegal is a disgusting, but unsurprising, attempt by our vile government to conceal its colossal failure, over the last 10 years, at improving the lot of prostitutes and, frankly, its failure everywhere else. All our lunatic ruling class ever does, in its attempt at 鈥榮olving鈥 a perceived problem, is select the cheapest option (they鈥檝e squandered so much of our money that I guess it鈥檚 the only option left): changing the law, a law which is, presumably, in its current state for a reason. Changing words on a bit of paper is much better than action.
As someone who hasn鈥檛 ever paid for sex, I, never-the-less, support a person鈥檚 right to do so and a person鈥檚 right to offer that service, because I believe in freedom: the freedom of a person to do whatever they want with their bodies. It is not my right or the right of the state to dictate how a person uses their body, behind closed doors. It is not society鈥檚 job to regulate sex. The only role of the state is to ensure, via education and parenting, everybody is equipped with the knowledge and life skills a person will need to cope with what life throws at them. Take some practical steps to tackle the root causes of society鈥檚 problems and stop wasting your time trying to impose, on the rest of us, your moral objections to the selling of sex. It won鈥檛 succeed. Much of prostitution is a symptom of drug abuse, which, itself, is a symptom of a poor education and poor upbringing, so that is where the attention should be focused.
I sometimes think these people who believe the answer to the 鈥榩roblem鈥 of prostitution is its abolition take a perverse pleasure in the persecution of prostitutes. They must know its abolition won鈥檛 ever be achieved and yet continue, year after year and decade after decade, railing against it whilst, every day, thousands of women suffer abuse and tens of thousands continue their downward spiral into greater drug addiction.
Prostitution exists due to the fundamental difference between men and women when it comes to sex. Like it or not, most men can, quite easily, separate sex from emotion and see it, at times, purely as an act, so some, although, thankfully, a minority, will always want, occasionally, a quick and anonymous bunk-up (to put it politely). A public campaign to change this would have only a marginal effect. I don鈥檛 mean to be crude, but, together with the male genitalia being outside of the body and, so, easy to stimulate, and the result of the stimulation being achieved, quite often, incredibly quickly (as I鈥檓 sure most women would attest), some women, no matter how well educated and raised, will continue to be willing to offer sex as a service. Most women won鈥檛 and most men won鈥檛 want the service but it will always exist. To think otherwise is ridiculous. It isn鈥檛 the oldest profession because no one has had the courage to tackle it, but because it goes to the heart of the differences between the sexes.
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鈥淚鈥檓 never going to launch another campaign again.鈥 Well, thank god.
When I buy goods at the shops and the goods are placed in plastic bags, I am not responsible for birds dying or dolphins swimming in bag-infested water. The flap of a butterfly鈥檚 wings may cause a typhoon on the other side of the world, but I rest easily knowing buying a loaf of bread and putting it in a bag does not result in the death of a bird or anything else. If I throw away a bag after one use or 100 uses, I am not responsible for what happens to it afterwards. If I send it for recycling but it isn鈥檛 recycled, it isn鈥檛 my fault. If it is supposed to end up in landfill but, instead, is loaded onto a ship and dumped at sea, I am not responsible. Blame those who are, not me.
How about being told how plastic is, by far, the best material for bags. How about hearing of the remarkable array of colours in which plastic can be produced; of how long-lasting it can be; of how, when manufactured into a bag, it can act as a cheap method of advertising for a retailer; and of how there are 1001 uses for a plastic bag, 1000 more than for a paper bag. Also, let鈥檚 not bully a shop-keeper for choosing plastic bags over paper ones. Only managing to scrape a living due to fierce high street competition, this may have been the only affordable option.
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Two reports: linked by an attack on freedom.
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